Danish Jews

Danish Jews are a community of Jews native to Denmark. In 1536, Jews and Catholics were prohibited from entering Protestant Denmark, but Jews were granted protection by the monarchy in 1628, and King Frederick III of Denmark invited Jewish immigration in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War, seeking to improve trade. Jews still suffered from social and economic discrimination, but they had a degree of self-governance, and they were not forced to live in ghettos. The Napoleonic Wars brought about Jewish emancipation, and many Jews would intermarry with Christians and became assimilated into Danish society. During World War II, the Jews were left unmolested until 1943, when Adolf Hitler gave orders to round up and deport the Jews to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The Danish Resistance, with the help of sympathetic Copenhagen hospital staff, fishermen, and the German naval attache Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, managed to rescue the Jews and take them to Sweden, where they remained as refugees during the war, returning home after the German surrender. In 2015, 6,400 Jews were living in Denmark.